Chapter Text
You're not leaving.
Sans lost track of the human amongst the throb of his skull. Curse humans, their easy violence and nimble bodies. His head pounded, his own unstable eyelight hindering his vision as it flickered in and out, streaming red tears and leaving blind spots where the human could easily attack again.
Too dangerous. His magic reserves were exhausted, he couldn’t catch the little beast now.
He would soon.
Nowhere she could go.
He tracked her scent, but couldn’t follow it well through the close-set trees. He’d find her, when the storm was over and her broken body turned up in one of their traps. They would eat well, then.
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It had been a fight to stay quiet, to wait it out. She lay in the drift, curled up around her left leg, pinned between the teeth of the trap. It had been forgotten about by the looks of it, rusted and stiff, jaws big enough to stop a rhino.
Kit could hear the monster tromping about nearby, looking for her, his footfalls snapping branches and his breath a steady growl. It was a trade-off between waiting for him to stop looking, and risking passing out in the snow. Her hands gripped her leg. It was throbbing so painfully that Kit almost wished he’d find her, put her out of her misery. The teeth were blunt, but they pinched and gnawed at her freezing skin.
By the time the monster left, Kit had lost sensation in the leg. It was a blessing, really, as she knew what came next. She pulled her sluggish body upright and placed one fist at either end of the trap’s jaws.
The springs were old, flat plates of bent metal, the trap clearly improvised by someone who only had a vague idea of what a foothold trap looked like. It took fifteen minutes of grunting, gritted teeth and stiff fists pressing down on the rusted metal before the jaws screeched and gave way enough for her to pull her leg free.
Getting out was more painful than getting in. The snow absorbed the moan she barely stifled as her ankle came loose.
She was eternally grateful to her battle-proven staff. It was several inches shorter now, the top splintered where it had made contact with the skull of the monster. It still helped to drag her on her ruined leg, back through the snow towards the path. She didn’t have time to feel guilty for the possible harm she had caused. She had priorities.
Kit slipped and instinctively put her wounded foot down, tears springing up and freezing on her cold-burned cheeks. She was sure she would die, or perhaps already was dead. It was a constant fight against her own psyche, to keep walking, to convince herself not to fall asleep in the storm.
She had been going the wrong way the whole time. When she thought she had been heading for the forest outskirts, she had actually been running straight towards the village. The structure she had thought was the wood cabin was in fact a house.
It was impressive she didn’t run into the jaws of a monster much sooner.
She was now south of the village. On all sides, the forest opened back up into vulnerable clearings with houses and structures. She lay under a tree and waited for the snowstorm to end. She was so cold that she was starting to feel warm.
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She managed for nearly five days.
It was hopeless, but she was persistent. She couldn’t leave the area of forest she was in, couldn’t manage more than a minute of walking before she had to rest, couldn’t risk trying to get past the monsters. They didn’t seem to bother with this little cluster of trees; it was inside the village boundary and probably not worth patrolling.
She had messily bound her leg. It was ugly and bruised where the teeth clamped down, the damaged ankle bloody and swollen. Meanwhile, her fingers had gone white and shiny. Frostbite. They would be beyond saving soon.
She could only move by the use of her cane, and she had gone through all the food she had left, including the tiny apples she had picked and her foil-wrapped rations. She was just barely alive, and she was especially aware of it for the fact that she could feel her limbs dying, giving up.
Not long now.
It really was a horrifying sensation. An awful way to go, she thought.
When she awoke on the nineteenth day, she knew it was the last.
Her vision was darkening at the edges. A strange sort of peacefulness had descended over her in the night, and she could no longer feel the cold. The snowflakes that landed on her skin didn’t melt. Her body must be the same temperature as everything else by now. She rolled onto her front where she lay, in a nest hollowed into the dirt and padded by her bloodied, sodden blanket.
From here, she could watch the village further up the slope. The monsters went about their business oblivious to their wounded prey, dying slowly only metres away…
One of the nearby houses belonged to the giant skeleton who had doomed her, and she watched with spite as he went about his business. There he went now, to do whatever it was he did every day, trudging out of the town with other monsters ducking their heads or turning away so he wouldn’t pay them any attention. They were afraid, too.
Her eyes drifted back to the house. He was the only one who ever came out. Was that useful? She couldn’t piece the thought together. Revenge? She could… ambush him maybe? No, he’d kill her so easily. She could steal his food… if he had any. Did skeletons eat?
Her focus roamed over the darkened windows of the house. Some lower panes were smashed or missing, like someone had tried to break in. Beside the house was a small shed. Only a few feet away. Her delirious mind formed a half-baked plan.
She dragged herself along, stumbling, abandoning her blanket to the forest and hoisting herself with what remained of her strength. Her muscles barely responded. She struggled to grip her staff. Somehow, she made it to the door, panting, only falling into the snow twice on the way. Against every odd, despite all the foul luck she had had, the door was unlocked.
It was marginally warmer here. In the gloom she looked about. A tool rack. A workbench. A shelf of dusty tins without labels. Please, please, by any god that is listening, let there be food. She knocked a rusted sickle down from the tool rack, desperately smashed a random tin against the edge until it burst. It had been food… at one point.
She couldn’t tell what the lumpy substance was, but she raised it to her mouth anyway and ate from the opening, cutting the corners of her mouth on the metal. She could only taste blood, but she assured herself the substance must be some kind of vegetable, stopped herself from gagging and swallowed it down.
If it killed her, at least it would be quicker than hypothermia. To think she had been worried about that flower pie that the nice goat lady had made her. She should have stayed in the cute little cottage with the fireplace and the soft bed...
Hmm… Sleep. Sleep sounded wonderful.
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He could smell the blood as soon as he reached the outskirts of Snowdin. Someone must have caught her. Finally. Took longer than he had expected. He had known she was still alive, still close by - he might not have much magic nowadays, but the scent of a human was easy to track.
It was a shame that he hadn’t been the one to find her, he would have liked some real food. It was alright, though - whoever had caught the little beast deserved the meat. He was sure that the human gave them a challenging hunt.
The town felt… off. It was quiet, as always, but it felt like all of Snowdin was on-edge. They could probably smell the blood too. Doggo was pacing at the border, and his ears went back when Sans made eye contact.
Fear. That wasn’t unusual. They all thought he’d killed his own brother, why wouldn’t they be afraid?
The scent got stronger as he neared home. Smelled like they’d dragged the corpse all over the damn town before they took it home. Stars, it reeked. He hated that metallic smell, hated that it made him hungry. When he reached his front door, he stopped, turned his head slowly to left and right. Breathed in deep.
The light from his single eye fell onto the storehouse.
...
She was curled up in a ball under the worktable. She was so small that he might not have noticed her, were the scent of her not pervading the whole area. He lowered himself to sit at the other end of the room, his eye casting the darkness in red and reflecting off the tools on the wall.
He could wait for her to wake up. The human had had the courtesy not to kill him out in the woods; despite the unexpected strength of that blow she had given his skull, there was no ill intent behind it. If there had been, he wouldn't be alive. There was no justification for killing a person in their sleep anyway, so he would wait.
Now that he was in the same room as her, he could smell something else beneath the tang of blood. A sickly, cloying scent like death. The thought of eating human made him feel ill at the best of times, but she smelled bad. Rotten. He wasn’t desperate enough to eat rotten meat.
He thought perhaps she had fallen down. She wasn’t moving, and her breath came in shallow gasps. The skin on her face and hands was shiny, discoloured, bleeding in places.
Skeletons don’t need to eat that often anyway. He was patient. He could hang on a bit longer for the sake of less rotten meat.
He snuffed out the light in his eye, and he watched.
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Kit should have known it would go like this.
When she awoke, she found that some of her fight had returned. Her limbs responded more readily, her reaction time was a little better - which would be tested, when she noticed that she was no longer alone.
A looming hulk. The skeleton, resting against the far wall. The red light was gone from the gaping pit of his eyesocket, and she could hear him breathing evenly. Was he unconscious? He hadn’t been there when she entered the cabin, she was sure she would have noticed him even in her delirious state. She took in the details of his form.
Dirty, rough bone, shadowed below his eyesockets, giving the illusion of sickness and fatigue. The visible hand resting palm-up on the floor was oversized, spindly, but with an area of smooth bone that formed a solid palm - not like a human skeleton at all. His skull was twice the size of a human one too, though similar in shape. Above his left socket, a wide fissure split his skull, running back over his head and down to reach the edge of the socket.
She tipped her head, eyes trained on the crack. Had she made it worse when she hit him? She almost hoped not. Unlike whoever had set the trap that ruined her leg, she never intended to do other survivors harm. They were all just trying to get by.
She didn’t blame people for taking the violent route - it was so much easier to get by through means of murder - but she didn't have the strength of body or mind to live that way.
With some effort to remain silent, she shifted herself up and over to the door. She had to crawl, since her leg had become even less useable while she slept. It was like dragging a lead weight. She dreaded to think that she might have to cut it off somehow if it didn’t heal.
She made it to the door without waking the monster, but found that it had been bolted shut. Two deadbolts, one at the bottom and one at the top. It took most of her remaining strength, but she wrested the lower bolt up without a sound.
The door was tall, clearly built to accommodate people over seven feet tall. She managed to stand, clutching the handle and heaving herself up, most of her weight against the flat of the door, but even standing up she wasn’t close to reaching the top bolt. If she could jump, she might just be able to touch the bolt, but she still wouldn’t be able to pull it down.
Her expression hardened with conviction.
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It had never been his intention to let her escape.
Sans continued to appear dormant, entertaining himself watching the little creature shuffle about. It appeared that her leg was broken, or at least badly wounded. Had he done that? He couldn’t remember. He thought she was running just fine when he lost sight of her in the woods.
He watched as she lifted the long stick she had hit him with in the forest, gingerly letting it make contact with the door before she attempted to lever the jagged end of it underneath the deadbolt. Surprisingly she managed to rotate it somewhat, but the bolt screeched as it turned in its socket.
The human froze, dropped clumsily to the floor, staring back at him in the dark with terror on her features. He couldn’t help himself: he let out a low, rough chuckle and allowed his eyelight to sputter back to life, his permanent smile widening.
The human let out a growl of her own, small and frail just like her. He found it almost endearing - like a rabbit trying to intimidate a bear. He gathered his thoughts and focused on the words. It was harder nowadays, he tended to forget sentences halfway through if he wasn't paying attention.
“You’re not leaving.”
She tried to stand, her leg gave way under her and caused her to put all her weight on the stick. Sans stood too, hands in his pockets casually.
“Why haven’t you killed me already?” Her voice was feeble, barely a whisper. He tilted his head to hear her better.
“...Sure I was… going to?”
She scoffed. “Don’t fuck with me, of course you are.”
Her audacity was impressive, considering. The hum of his eye filled the silence while he thought. “Maybe I like-... to play with my food.” He grinned.
That got a reaction. Her blood-stained mouth turned down at the corners. Her growling rose, and she bared her teeth. Well, he’d thought it was funny.
“You bastard. I’m done for anyway, get it over with quickly.”
He fell silent, head still tilted, his eyelight twitching as he processed her words.
“...Why?”
She merely glared in response, but he waited patiently. He was good at waiting. She frowned deeply at him, and then sunk to the floor.
“Look. Half of my body is rotting away,” her voice cracked, “so if you’re going to eat me, just be quick about it.”
His vision roamed over her, the red of his eye reflecting off the pallor of her skin. Clearly her leg was wounded. Her mouth was bleeding too, and her vision was out of focus. Her fingers didn’t seem to grip properly.
"...No."
He moved with purpose, shrugged off his faded blue coat and threw it over her. She tried to back away, but the heavy fabric enveloped her and trapped her in place. Sans hoisted the human into the crook of his arm, and unbolted the door.
His jacket would do to mask her scent while he swiftly carried her to the house. He felt her struggle uselessly, so he squeezed her tighter until she squeaked and stopped moving. She was his prey; he found her and he would get to eat her, but she wasn’t ready for eating yet.
He set the bundle down on the rug and went about setting a fire in the hearth. The bundle shuffled, wriggled away a little, and he laid one hand on the fabric to stop her.
“Why struggle?” He asked. The bundle went still again.
When the fire was set, he pulled his jacket free and dropped it aside. The human glared up at him, sprawled on the floor. Her wide eyes travelled to his face then flicked away to investigate the room, probably looking for a way to escape.
He plucked away the things wrapped around her shoulders. Rope, and a bag, and the sodden jacket she was wearing. He tossed them to the side so that he could work more easily. She didn’t seem to like that, and struggled with her useless fingers to grasp the items when he pulled them away and placed them out of her reach. He pushed her hand down.
“No.” He stated.
Sans took ahold of the foot that lay slack on the floor. The human gave a sharp noise of pain and fear, and one of her hands went around his. Her tiny fingers were so delicate and cold, barely gripping him as they tried desperately to pry his talons away.
So small. Had Frisk been that small? But he was smaller back then, too…
He was torn from his thoughts as something came into contact with the back of his hand. He focussed on it. The human had… tried to stab his hand with a fork - ‘stab’ being a generous term; he had hardly felt it. Yet again, there was no malice behind the attack - the prongs had bent outwards and left barely a scratch.
He chuckled, and caged both her hands in one of his own, squeezing them enough that she had to drop her secret weapon, keeping her out of the way while he carefully slipped her boot free. She whined as it came away, and that sickly scent became all the more apparent as the wounded limb was revealed.
A stained bandage wrapped the leg, but it didn’t seem to be doing much good. All her clothing was soaked through and just as cold as she was. How something so small had survived in that storm, he couldn’t fathom. He knew humans weren’t good at cold.
He loosened his grip on her, since she had stopped resisting. She didn’t react, apparently in a daze as she watched his actions without a sound, so he let her go completely, using both hands to unwrap the bandages.
It wasn’t… good. He knew how humans worked, how much their bodies could take before they gave up. There wasn’t too much blood, but the limb was the wrong colour by far. Evenly-spaced gouges encircled her ankle.
“Teeth.” He remarked. “A monster? Or... a trap?” She didn’t answer, eyes wide and staring past him into the fire. Her breath was coming shallow and fast.
He stripped away her socks - she had several, layered up - and inspected her foot. Her extremities were waxy and grey. Yes, he remembered this happened to humans in the cold - what was it called?
“...Frost. Frost-...?” He searched for the word aloud. He couldn’t quite…
“Frostbite.” She whispered, eyes still glazed.
Ahh, that was the one. He smiled to himself. His memory was shot full of holes just like his head, but he was pretty pleased with himself for that recollection.
He needed to fix this, to get rid of the stench of sickness. This wasn’t edible. He poked at her other foot several times, until she blinked and her vision focussed on him.
“This one too.” He poked her foot again. Her eyes flicked down to the leg that still had a boot on it, and she shook her head. He huffed and gripped her boot for her, pulling it loose, and repeating:
“This one too.”
She got the idea that time, and began obediently working free the bandage and socks on the other leg.
While she was distracted, he slipped his fingers under her ankle and lifted it gently, drawing another whine from her. He could feel her tense up every time he moved, but as much as he might have joked about it, he wouldn’t force her to suffer before she died. Not even humans deserved that.
He took a breath, stilling his soul and cycling what remained of his magic. Green; it wasn’t hard, he used to do this for Paps all the time. Clear your head. Green magic, like… like Undyne’s...
His hands involuntarily clenched, and the human yelped and kicked at him with her stronger foot, wriggling despite the pain it must have caused her to do so. He let go as soon as his mind caught up, and she scrambled away, dragging her wounded leg, backing up until she hit the sofa. A tear dropped down her cheek, leaving a track in the dirt.
“No.” He grumbled. He hadn’t meant to do that.
He shuffled over to her, her tiny form shrinking back further against the sofa as if she could get away. One hand went to her shoulder and held her in place, his thumb wiping the teardrop away. His movement drew another growl from the little creature as his other hand curled around her leg again. He just needed her to stay still for a moment. He pushed her back into the sofa further, and she made a distressed squeak but stopped moving. There. Better.
He avoided thinking about the magic too much as he summoned it this time, and successfully managed to draw a thin stream of glimmering green which trickled down to pool in his palm.
He felt it begin to warm his bones and her skin as a wave of emotional feedback came over him. Comfort and reassurance, as was associated with green magic. He saw the same effect in her eyes where they reflected the light. Her distrustful glare softened at the edges, becoming confused.
He was very tired now, but it’d be worth it in the end. She’d taste much better if the meat was healthy. His eyelight sputtered painfully and leaked red essence down his cheekbone, and a wave of dizziness overcame him. Maybe he went a little overboard.
He wiped away the residual magic from around his socket, and lifted his prey to set her back beside the fireplace, telling her: “Stay.”
He pushed his jacket over to her, where it would at least do something to cover her scent. She still frowned up at him darkly, but said nothing. Her firey temperament was unnerving. He went to perform his final checks for the night and get away, somewhere safe and secure.
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Kit curled further into herself as the skeleton stood and left her be, pushing his coat over to her with his foot. He slumped away to a darkened corner of the room, taking the hum of the red light with him.
What was she meant to think?
She had been sure he was intending to kill her right away, and her fear and pain had driven her into a state of dissociation, preparing for the inevitable, but... He had put in a fire to keep her warm, done whatever that light was to her wounded leg that filled her with unwarranted comfort and smoothed over the sores on her skin. Everything about this creature was both terrifying and contradictory.
His voice was deep like a tomb, like the ocean floor. It was felt more than heard. She could drown in it, and its resonation sparked fear in her instantly. He was tough too, barely reacting to her attempts to get free from him. He could crush her in a heartbeat, but he was calm behind his threatening aura.
He had pinned her down, smiled maliciously and twisted her wounded leg, and then healed it without explanation. Clearly it took some effort too, she didn’t miss the physical toll that doing that… thing… had brought on the monster - it had made him cry for goodness’ sake! She wondered if it had hurt him, to take her pain away.
She heard a lock click, and the skeleton shuffled back past her, switching off the light - an electric light - and sloping off into the darkness of the house. Even when he was out of sight, she could hear him moving around upstairs, floorboards creaking under him. She didn’t bother to look for a way out: even if there was one she would die within a day of escaping. She had to recover her strength first.
She dragged herself closer to the fire and pulled out another log to lay across it. The warmth prickled her cheeks and fingers after the weeks of exposure. Right now she couldn’t bear to think about going back out into the ice.
Consciousness was leaving her. Before sleep stole away with her completely, she reached for the coat he had left behind and wrapped it around her shoulders. It swamped her, and though it was threadbare, the lining was still soft. The front of the garment was stained a dark red, so she didn’t touch that part. It smelt of woodsmoke and something metallic, like rust. She tried not to think about it.
When she awoke, her head was throbbing. The skeleton was sitting on the sofa and just staring at the opposite wall, one finger hooked over the edge of his damaged eyesocket. His pupil hummed that continuous low tone as it flickered. A spark spat out from it, making both of them jump. The monster scraped his talons down over the offending socket with an unnerving, hollow sound.
When the light came back into view, it was focused on Kit. The monster grinned, which was disconcerting on a face with a smile already set so wide. Kit wondered if he was as hungry as she was, and why she hadn’t been killed yet.
It could be some psychological torture, she thought, as he lifted her back up like a doll in his gigantic talons and put her on the sofa. Perhaps his intention was to inspire Stockholm Syndrome, or just toy with her until he got bored. He had already admitted that he intended to eat her, so why was he wasting his time helping her?
Should she run now, or risk another day of recovery?
Kit was conflicted. She tried to consider how she would react if a human had captured her, but her judgement was blurred by her feverish mind. She knew that if she left now, she wouldn’t stand a chance of outrunning anyone who tried to catch her again, even this slowpoke of a monster.
She settled on biding her time, keeping an eye out for possible ways to escape.
The monster retrieved the jacket and left her alone to make his daily errands, making it clear by a heavy hand on her shoulder that he expected her to sit put. He commanded her to ‘stay’ again.
As soon as he was gone, she disobeyed on principle and crawled over to her staff which he had propped in a corner. He had left all of her things right where she could reach them. Her jacket was hung over a chair by the fire to dry with her boots. He hadn’t even confiscated her rucksack, and the crooked fork lay on top of it almost mockingly.
Maybe he was absent-minded, as slow mentally as he was physically. Unlike Toriel, the skeleton didn’t seem to care about whether Kit was disobedient or violent. When she lashed out, he just stared at her, unphased.
Most likely, he thought that she couldn’t do anything to hurt him. He was probably right.
She scouted out the house with the help of her trusty cane. There was only one door on the ground floor, which was locked as expected. The window in the living room was boarded up completely aside from a gap at the top. Too high and too small for her to climb through in her current state.
Through the gaps in the boards, Kit could see that the snowdrifts outside the house that reached up over the windowsill. She spent a while testing the strength of all the boards, but they had been reinforced thoroughly. Not a chance. She drank some water from the kitchen tap before carrying on.
She shuffled her way up the stairs, and when she arrived at the top, panting and shaky, she checked each of the doors on this floor. Two were locked, one opened to reveal an airing cupboard, and one lead to a bathroom.
She used the bathroom, glad for the luxury of real facilities for a change. The water came through lukewarm, and she clenched and unclenched her stiff fingers under the stream as she attempted to scrub the layers of dirt from her hands and face. She tried not to look in the mirror. The girl she saw there wasn’t one she recognised. Too thin. Eyes dull and cheeks gaunt under the stains that refused to wash away.
She dried herself, and continued her reconnaissance. At the end of the corridor was one last door, but this was also crudely boarded up on the inside. She could see a small balcony beyond the planks, sheltered below the eaves of the house.
It felt like this house had been built with a family in mind, once upon a time. Safe and sturdy. Small enough to be defensible, but big enough for several occupants. The walls weren’t thick enough to do much about the cold, but they kept the sounds of the outside world at bay.
Incredible that anyone could build a place like this inside a cave.
If Kit intended to get out of here, she would need a plan. She could find out where the monster kept the door key; if he was as absent-minded as he appeared, that could be an option. It would be safer to pry the boards free from a window, but that would have to wait until she was stronger, and she didn’t know if she had that long.
When she had finished her exploring, she lay against the wall in the corridor with her left leg stretched out. Her body was overheating and shivering at the same time, and she was fighting the urge to fall asleep. She didn’t want to go back downstairs. Her abductor needed to be aware that she wasn’t going to be compliant.
No, no. Instead of doing as she was told and staying put, she would find somewhere to sleep where he couldn’t find her.
That airing cupboard seemed promising…
It was perfect, once she had made a cocoon out of the towels in there. She had some trouble curling up and bashed her leg more than once, but in the end, she had a good hiding place. It was warm in there, too - the boiler was working, so it looked like this monster had a reliable source of electricity.
She fell asleep like that, in the close safety of darkness.
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A thud announced the monster’s arrival home, but Kit hardly registered it, adjusting her position and groaning softly into her towel bedding. Muffled speech, followed by a long, low growl that shook her fully awake as she remembered what she had done.
She held her breath, a wry smile playing on her lips as she listened to the monster stomp around the house, movements getting more and more urgent. He passed by her hiding spot, opened and slammed a couple of other doors, and then let loose a furious roar. An object hit the floor and shattered. She almost began to hope that he wouldn’t find her.
Heavy footsteps passed by the cupboard door, then slowed. He was so close that Kit could hear his laboured breath. Her heart hammered so loudly. The light from his eye rolled slowly over, beamed between the slats in the door. Would he kill her now? She was past the point of really caring; it was only a matter of time.
The door was forcefully thrown open, and the skeleton released an exasperated growl and dragged her from the cupboard by her wrist. Kit yelped at the strength of his grip and tried to squirm free, but he held tighter.
She was roughly picked up under one arm and pressed against his ribcage, carried back downstairs, and dropped with some force to the floor, drawing another yelp from her as she jarred her leg. She curled up, eyes scrunched shut to stop the tears. He wouldn’t see her concede so easily to violence. His breath was heavy and close above her, accompanied by the oscillating hum of his eye.
She wiped her hot eyes and risked a glance. The monster was standing over her, single pupil constricted and seething. A drop of that red light ran down his cheekbone and dropped onto the front of his jacket, adding to the dark stain there. His chest rose and fell deeply as he loomed, fists clenched.
...She was in trouble.
She began to shuffle away, towards the door. A shower of sparks sputtered from his socket and several jagged bones tore up through the floor behind her, blocking her escape. Kit froze, eyes wide.
“Y-you don’t… go a-anywhere.” He rumbled.
Her expression remained defiant despite the show of… whatever that was... He looked like he might strike her, or worse, but instead he took a deep breath, released it, and turned away. He strode over to her belongings in the corner, and took up her rope.
Hoisted again by her own petard...
Her hands were quickly and tightly bound behind her back despite her squirming. She turned and tried to bite him, but her teeth just clamped down on the padded sleeve of his jacket to no avail. He huffed and pushed her head away. When she was bound he pulled the rope taught, lifting her by her wrists and making her yelp. He tilted the sofa up one-handed to throw the rope under and trap it beneath.
“Stay. There.” He punctuated it by letting the furniture drop back into place.
Kit screamed fiercely at him. It took him about three seconds to react, turn and look at her, lean in close, and let loose a bellow of such fury that she fell backwards from the force. She rolled onto her side and glowered at the wall, tensing her shoulders so he didn’t see her tremble.
It only took her about thirty minutes to get free.
The trick was that when your hands were bound, you had to keep your wrists and an angle from one another. Her father had taught her that.
All she had to do was angle her wrists back parallel to one another and use the slack to wriggle free. She sat with her hands behind her, backed up against the sofa so the skeleton wouldn’t realise she was free when he came back in to the room to light a fire.
He didn’t speak, didn’t even look at her, no sound but his eye buzzing and the fire crackling as he breathed life into it. When he threw his jacket over her, still avoiding eye contact, and went upstairs to sleep, Kit took ahold of the rope.
It took all her weight to free it from beneath the sofa, but she managed and it came loose abruptly, knocking her flat. She wrapped it up good and small, and hid it at the very back of one of the kitchen cupboards, low down where he would struggle to look. Before she stashed it away, she fetched her knife and cut a little piece from the end. It wouldn’t matter if it was a bit shorter.
The spare piece of rope went into the fire, hanging out so that it didn’t burn completely. Then, she stowed her knife deep in her pack again and dragged the jacket with her behind the sofa. She fell asleep wedged in the gap. Now the score was even again, and the beast could guarantee she would be giving him the silent treatment tomorrow. Eventually he would learn not to try to cage a wild animal.
She was awoken by the light from his eye, blindingly close. She tried to scramble away, but the back of her head met the wall hard, making her groan. The skeleton chuckled darkly at her from his position leaning over the back of the sofa. How long had he been watching her?
“Come out.”
She just huffed at him, wedging herself further into the little gap to make it clear she wasn’t going to stop acting up. This was his fault for trying to subdue her.
She was playing with fire, but morbid curiosity made her want to see how far she could push her luck. Whether he would snap and do something truly violent, or whether she could drive him to make an irrational mistake that would grant her her freedom.
One giant hand took ahold of her bad leg.
“Ah- ouch! Don’t!” She yelled urgently. So much for the silent treatment…
The hand stopped moving, then slowly retracted.
“Come out.” He repeated, quieter.
When she didn’t respond, the monster disappeared from above. Rather than pull her out of her hiding spot, he effortlessly pulled the sofa away from her instead, and then leaned over to pick her up like a doll again.
She fought him, of course. She hated that she was so useless in his grasp. He could hold her easily in one arm, and all her struggles were as effective as trying to bend iron.
“The rope?” He lifted her by her shoulders to look her in the eye, pointed talons gripping her tight.
She refused to answer, so he asked again in the same passive tone. She pointed to the fireplace dismissively. He thankfully put her down to check the fireplace, then faced her with a squint, the charred rope-end between his thumb and index finger. For a moment, she thought he wasn’t going to buy it, but then he let out a long sigh.
“It’s yours… why destroy it?”
Kit shrugged, still avoiding dignifying him with a verbal response. The skeleton shook his head, then reached out towards her. She tensed, expecting aggression, but it didn’t come. His movements were careful as he pulled his coat away from around her shoulders and stood to leave. As he reached the door, though, he stopped, turned, and came back to her.
One huge hand came to rest on her shoulder.
“Stay.”
When he didn’t remove his hand, Kit frowned up at him, and then made the realisation that he was vying for confirmation from her.
“Stay.” He said again, more gently.
She merely shook her head, and shrugged away from his grasp.
He wouldn’t catch her out that easily.